Aeroflot Open: Early highlights

2/22/2018 – The Aeroflot open sports a strong field of 60 GMs, 27 IMs, two WGMs and three FMs. In such a tournament the favourites are not likely to have an easy time. For instance, Dmitry Andreikin had a long fight for his draw against Andrey Esipenko in the first round. Another top seed, Rauf Mamedov, actually lost. The second round, however, contained fewer surprises. | Photo: Niklesh Jain

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Six remain perfect through two rounds

In open tournaments, the first round pairings typically pit the upper half of the draw against the players of the lower half. This results in some charming encounters of nominally weaker players against the top players on the ranking list. Most of the time, the favorites prevail, but not always. Occasionally, the supposedly simple hurdles are higher than expected. And sometimes even those with hefty Elos make mistakes.

The Aeroflot Open is a bit different. The chess class here is so deep that there are hardly any "weaker" players. Even the slightly lesser players are dangerous opponents for everyone at the top: they may be strong youth, or maybe players who have played few international tournaments so far, and on paper are below the level of their practical skills. Those who wish to develop tournament toughness could do worse than running the gauntlet at the Aeroflot Open.

The 16th edition of the Aeroflot Open started on Tuesday in Moscow, Russia, and runs through March 1st

After Russia, India is the largest contingent of this edition. Fully 16 players are registered including the number two seed, Vidit Gujrathi, and the weakest player by rating in the A-group, IM Eesha Karavade, coming in at number 92.

The Indian group | Photo: Niklesh Jain

Of course, the two Indian prodigies Nihal Sarin, now thirteen years old, and Praggnanandhaa (twelve and six months) are back. They hardly miss a tournament and are rising up the elite ladder at a good clip. Currently, the slightly older Nihal Sarin has his nose in front, at 2532 Elo. Praggnanandhaa is rated 2507, and unfortunately is now almost certainly not going to break Sergey Karjakin's record as the youngest GM ever.

Nihal Sarin | Photo: Niklesh Jain

In the first round, Sarin, in the lower half of the draw, got paired against one of the better grandmasters, his countryman Sasikiran, the number four in the Indian rankings, behind Anand, Harikrishna and Vidit. With the black pieces, Sasikiran achieved a better position in the Fianchetto variation of the Grunfeld defense. But his young counterpart held his own for a long time as Sasikiran found no promising ideas. Finally, he reached an endgame with a queenside passer, which offered opportunities.

Black took on c1, after which he does not have much anymore. The computer recommends 56... Kf7 with advantage. The game soon ended in a draw.

Praggnanandhaa | Photo: Niklesh Jain

The match between Romanov and Praggnanandhaa was more lively. The Russian GM opened with an English and Praggnanandhaa then followed in the footsteps of Fabiano Caruana:

However, getting only a slightly better endgame, it did not yield more than a draw for Romanov.

Another Indian derby was played at table two. There, Vidit Gujrathi played against S. Naryanan. The two Indian GMs are the same age, born in 1994, but Vidit, perhaps also thanks to his collaboration with Anish Giri, has achieved a dominant position. Still, there was not more than half a point in store for the nominal favorite, just as on the neighboring tables.

On top board, Fedoseev started with a draw against the surprise winner of last year's European Rapid Championship, Maksim Vavulin. Afterwards, the defending Aeroflot champ also checked in with our reporter Niklesh Jain.

"It's a tradition for me to play [as] the first event of the year" | ChessBase India YouTube

The theme "youth versus not quite young anymore" was also on display at table three. Here, Dmitry Andreikin, naturally third in the seedling list, had to settle for a draw as well with Andrey Esipenko. Esipenko is reigning Under-16 World Champion and attracted attention with a beautiful combination at the World Rapid Championship against Karjakin (Qb3 !!). Andreikin with the black pieces in a Semi-Tarrasch had lost two pawns and he had to fight for the draw in the rook endgame.

White played 51.Rg3. More promising is Rdxg7 or Rg6, with the idea of ​​advancing the e-pawn. Andreikin got away with only a black eye. You will surely hear a lot more from Esipenko.

Matthias Blübaum and Rasmus Svane, the German representatives in Moscow, also received half a point each. Blubaum had black against Daniil Yuffa, a 20-year-old grandmaster from the Siberian city of Tyumen. In addition to being a strong grandmaster, it turns out he's a talented pianist, and recently stunned Russian TV audiences with a virtuoso performance featuring both skills.

In Russian, but easy to follow, and breathtaking!

In a theoretical duel in the French Defence, Yuffa had no great ambition and went for 3.Bd3:

This French Defence DVD is a complete attacking opening repertoire for black after 1.e4 e6. GM Nick Pert has played the French defence his whole life and provides all his la test and most up to date analysis crammed into 1 DVD.

All games of round one

The great popularity of the Petroff Defence at the highest level has attracted general attention lately. Many strong players employ this opening with great success and with both colours. Unfortunately the opinion of the Petroff Defence as a sterile drawish opening seems to be firmly implanted in many minds. The author tries to dispel these myths and presents his understanding of the matter. He examines the most popular lines and provides a large number of ideas that will enable you to play Petroff successfully, with either colour.

Vidit had the misfortune of facing his second Indian player in a row, the aforementioned lowest ranked A-group player IMKaravade, who held him to a draw. While they played a full game, it's unlikely to be the case that the team travelled all the way to Moscow hoping to get paired against each other! Vidit can't afford to give up too many half points like this (as a massive rating favourite) if he wants to stay near the leaders.

Vidit is on 50%, not the start he wanted

Anton Korobov got his second win of the event, evidently picking up on his winning ways from Wijk aan Zee. Playing black, Korobov snapped Manuel Petrosyan back down to earth, although the Armenian squandard a winning advantage.

32.Re1 gave back most of White's gains, but the counter-intuitive 32.Be3!, destabilising the black knights would have led to a win of a piece: 32...Nxe3 (or 32...Na4 33.Bf4!) 33. fxe3 Bc5 34.Rxh8+ Kxh8 35.Rd1 and black will have to give up his knight for the c-pawn sooner or later.

Among the other back-to-back winners are veterans Alexander Khalifman and Victor Bologan. Khalifman took just 24 moves to put a damper on Kirill Shevchenko's dream start.

Rook endings are amongst the most frequently encountered endgames there are. And it is precisely the area in which the effort put into training is particularly quickly repaid in the form of half and full points, because the knowledge of even a few rules of thumb and methods makes life a great deal easier and provides a guiding light even in complex positions. The second DVD in Karsten Müller’s series on the endgame was concerned with theoretical rook endings and was structured according to the distribution of material, but this DVD focuses on the themes which are to be found in rook endings.

Karsten Müller also wants to help you with the training of your intuition. After all, the real art of the royal game can best be seen in the recognition of exceptions to the rules.

The straight forward 61...g2 or Rg8 would draw for Xu, but he went the wrong way with his rook, 61...Re1 which led to catastrophe after 62.Ra2!+- Ke4 when black tried to escort the pawn with his king. But the monarch was needed to contain White's more dangerous pawn duo, which won the day; after Bologan sacrificed his rook for the g-pawn, the black king was too far away.

Macauley PetersonMacauley is Editor in Chief of ChessBase News in Hamburg, Germany, and producer of The Full English Breakfast chess podcast. He was an Associate Producer of the 2016 feature documentary, Magnus.

See also

2/26/2018 – The sixth round of the Aeroflot Open was tactics galore. While Vladimir Fedoseev went for broke to rip open his opponent's king in his game against IM Amin Tabatabaei, Krishnan Sasikiran caught Aryan Tari's king in a mating net after the latter gave up a piece for three pawns. Besides, the tournament saw yet another leader dethroned as Kovaleyev defeated Artemiev on the top board to take the sole lead himself. An illustrated report.

See also

2/24/2018 – The tournament has almost reached halfway stage at the Aeroflot Open. However, none of the 2700s are among the tournament leaders. The lead currently rests in the hands of Bologan, Petrosian and Artemiev. Meanwhile, the bottom-most seed of the tournament, IM Eesha Karavade brought down GM Rinat Jumabayev and is now tied for second. With five more rounds to go, it will be interesting to watch the top seeds fight their way to the top.

Video

The Grünfeld Defence is a very dynamic opening with an excellent reputation and the list of players ready to defend it reads like a who's who in chess. It is rather remarkable, that one variation still retains the position of main line and that after hundreds of games played with it some questions still remain open. 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.e4 Nxc3 6.bxc3 Bg7 7.Bc4 c5 8.Ne2 Nc6 9.Be3 0-0 10.0-0 promises White a very compact and solid pawn centre well supported by the pieces. Black is unable to destroy this main asset of the opponent, but can certainly try to undermine it with clever play.